This document summarizes religious and social reform movements that occurred in the United States between 1820-1860, during the period known as the Second Great Awakening. It describes the rise of evangelical Christianity and revivalism, as well as new religious groups like the Mormons. It also discusses the transcendentalist movement and thinkers like Emerson and Thoreau. Reform efforts related to health, education, temperance and abolition are outlined. In particular, it provides details on William Lloyd Garrison and the growth of the abolitionist movement in the 1830s.

1. HIST 2111
Chapter 13: Antebellum Idealism and
Reform, 1820-1860

2. The Second Great Awakening
• The Second Great Awakening: emphasized an emotional religious
style in which sinners grappled with their unworthy nature before
concluding that they were born again
• Devote themselves to living a righteous, Christ-centered life
• Emphasis on personal salvation
• Outdoor revival meetings
• Providing comfort in the midst of rapid change
• Many adopted Millennialism: belief that the Kingdom of God would
reign on earth for a thousand years characterized by harmony and
Christian morality
• Church membership doubled
• Formation of the American Bible Society, 1816: distribute Bibles
• American Sunday School Union: focused on the youth
• Missionaries

3. The Second Great Awakening
• The movement spurred many owners of enslaved peoples to
encourage their enslaved peoples to convert – prior to that, many
had feared their conversion – that they would use Christian
principles to oppose enslavement
• Now, they believed that if they became Christians, they would learn
the “right” form of Christianity, and would be more obedient and
hardworking
• It also served to ease the consciences of Christian owners of
enslaved peoples – argued that enslavement was divinely ordained
• Creation of African American forms of worship and churches – for
example, the African Methodist Episcopal Church – the 1st
independent black Protestant church in the U.S. (1790)
• Presbyterian minister Charles Grandison Finney was one of the
most important evangelicals
• Converted in 1821 and then devoted himself to revivals

4. Transcendentalism
• 1820s, new intellectual movement
• Transcendentalism: belief that there was knowledge beyond what the senses can
perceive and that ultimate truth “transcends” the physical world.
• Critical of mainstream American culture
• Argued for greater individualism against conformity
• They were also influenced by European Romanticism (stressed emotion over cold,
calculating reason)
• Ralph Waldo Emerson: leading figure of the movement, former Unitarian minister,
writer, teacher, and lecturer. “The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the
miraculous in the common.”
• Through nature, individuals could find personal fulfillment
• 1841, published the essay “Self-Reliance” – urged readers to think for themselves
and reject the mass conformity and mediocrity that he believed had taken root in
American life – be true to oneself and not follow the herd mentality!
• Many writers were drawn to this and expressed themselves through new stories,
poetry, and articles.

5. Transcendentalism
• Henry David Thoreau: 1849 essay: “Resistance to Civil Government”
argues that when a government requires an individual to violate
his/her own morality, it had no legitimate authority, and the proper
response to this was “civil disobedience” or “passive resistance” –
in which the public refused to obey unjust laws
• Margaret Fuller: leading transcendentalist and advocate for
women’s equality. She could not attend Harvard due to her gender,
but was later granted the use of their library because of her
intellect. She became a book reviewer but died in a shipwreck at 40
years old.
• Walt Whitman: poet, Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself
• Critics did not like transcendentalism’s emphasis on rampant
individualism
• Herman Melville – Moby Dick emphasized the perils of individual
obsession

6. Religious Utopian Societies
Utopian communities :
• The Shakers (founded by Ann Lee in the 1770s) had a sizeable following in
the 1840s. Members were forbidden to marry or have sex. One could not
be born into the community – it had to be a voluntary decision to join.
Lee taught that God was both male and female; Jesus embodied the male
side, while Mother Ann (as she called herself) represented the female
side. Men and women were held as equals in the community, no one
could hold private property. Aimed for self-sufficiency. Dancing was used
for emotional release.
• John Noyes’ Oneida Community (1848-1880, New York)had some lasting
success. It started in Vermont but because of their scandalous beliefs they
left for New York). Noyes believed one could become perfect and free of
sin. The community believed in radical ideas such as communal marriage
(free love, without sin), birth control, and eugenics. They believed Jesus
had returned in 70 AD.

7. Religious Utopian Societies
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons
• Founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, the Mormons believed that God had entrusted
them with a new set of scriptures called the Book of Mormon. Smith said that an
angel of God led him to a set of golden tablets in the hills of New York, and that
Jesus had come to America after his resurrection.
• Smith said that he was a prophet and aimed to recapture the purity of the
primitive Christian church – to him, this meant restoring male leadership
• Families must be ruled by fathers
• Valued work and discipline
• The church was plagued with persecution from the very beginning because of its
evangelizing, its separation from surrounding communities, and its radical ideas,
including polygamy. Its members, commonly referred to as Mormons, were
constantly on the move to avoid harassment. They went to Ohio in 1831, followed
by Missouri, and then Nauvoo, Illinois, where by the 1840s, they had 30,000. It is
here where Joseph Smith said he received further revelations, including one that
allowed male church leaders to practice polygamy.

8. Religious Utopian Societies
• He also declared that North and South
America would be the new Zion and that he
would run for president in 1844
• After Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum
were killed by an angry mob in Illinois in 1844,
the church members headed West under the
leadership of Brigham Young. After a long,
difficult trek, 140,000 Mormons settled in Salt
Lake City, Utah.

9. Secular Utopian Societies
• Brook Farm: established by George Ripley in 1841
in Massachusetts and came to be one of the most
famous attempts at communal living.
• Farmer-intellectuals tried to hew a modest living
out of the wilderness. Permitted every member
to have full opportunity for self-realization, share
equally in labor, leisure, etc. It dissolved in 1847.
• Author Nathaniel Hawthorne had been a
resident. He authored The Scarlet Letter (1850)

10. Temperance
• Evangelical Protestantism – crusade against
drunkenness – caused crime, disorder, poverty,
destroying families, and causing other ills
(Temperance movement)
• At first, they called for moderation n the
consumption of alcoholic beverages
• 1820s, Presbyterian Lyman Beecher urged total
abstinence from hard liquor
• American Temperance Society was formed in
1826
• Teetotalism: complete abstinence from all alcohol

11. Reforms for the Body and the Mind
• Quack doctors prescribed regimens and medicines that
did more harm than good
• Sylvester Graham – health reformer: lectured against
the evils of strong drink, also promoted vegetarianism,
and no spices
• He also advocated baths and cleanliness
• Hydrotherapy and spas
• Believed excessive sex caused disease and debility
• His idea of perfect food: the Graham cracker – he
invented it in 1829

12. Reforms for the Body and the Mind
• Phrenology – (started in
Germany), belief that
the shape of the skull
indicated character and
intelligence
• Phrenologists believed
that the mind contained
37 faculties (strengths
and weaknesses)

13. “Reforms” to Slavery
• Effort to resettle American African Americans to Africa and the
Caribbean. Did not believe that blacks and whites could live
together as equals
• 1817 – American Colonization Society: proposed the gradual freeing
of enslaved peoples, with compensation for masters
• Liberated men and women would be sent to set up their own
society
• Received private funding and some from Congress, and the
legislatures of Virginia and Maryland
• Sent several groups of freed blacks to West Africa where Liberia
was established (1830). It became an independent black republic in
1846.
• Not all went back: there were too many African Americans to be
transported, and some did not want to move there (they had been
in America for several generations now)

14. “Reforms” to Slavery
• Nat Turner’s rebellion prompted a discussion in Virginia
over slavery
• Some advocated for an easier manumission process;
however, the rebellion made that impossible
• Virginia and other southern states recommitted themselves
to slavery. They also blamed northerners for provoking
rebellion
• Literate, educated blacks like David Walker also favored
rebellion. He promoted the first African American
newspaper, Freedom’s Journal and called for blacks to
actively resist enslavement and to use violence if needed.
He denounced colonization. He died and no one is sure
what happened; many believe he was murdered.

15. William Lloyd Garrison and Antislavery
Societies
• William Lloyd Garrison publishes the Liberator in 1831
• He had briefly believed in colonization but soon felt that it
worsened racism
• Argued that abolitionists should talk about the damage slavery
caused to slaves
• Established the American Antislavery Society in 1833. Opposed the
use of violence to end slavery.
• Believed in moral suasion: appealing to the consciences of the
public, especially those who held enslaved peoples – use of
dramatic narratives, detailing the horrors of slavery, its destruction
of families, and more.
• He also supported immediatism: moral demand abolition and the
rights of citizenship to slaves and free African Americans
• Wanted equal rights for African Americans

16. William Lloyd Garrison and Antislavery
Societies
• The vast majority of northerners, however,
rejected abolition entirely – fear of freed
African Americans taking jobs from whites
• Garrison almost lost his life: a Boston anti-
abolitionist mob dragged him through the
streets in 1835
• A ‘gag rule’ was passed that forbade the
consideration of the many hundred of
petitions sent to Washington by abolitionists

17. Frederick Douglass
• "The opinion was ... whispered that my master was my father; but of the
correctness of this opinion I know nothing.... My mother and I were separated
when I was but an infant.... It [was] common custom, in the part of Maryland from
which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. I do not
recollect ever seeing my mother by the light of day. ... She would lie down with
me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone.“ Autobiography:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
• Escaped from Maryland in 1838 to Massachusetts and spent 2 years lecturing in
England
• He returned when British abolitionist friends bought his freedom from his owner
in 1847
• Argued for democratic freedom and full social and economic equality; emerged as
leader of abolition

18. Frederick Douglass

19. Women’s Rights
• Women played key roles in all the antebellum
reforms: transcendentalism, temperance,
abolition, etc.
• Their work against slavery encouraged them
to take action against gender equality
• Believed they lived in a society dominated by
men
• Most abolitionist men, however, clung to
traditional notions of popular gender roles

20. The Grimke Sisters
• Sarah and Angelina Grimke
• Combined the fight to end slavery with the struggle to
achieve female equality
• Born into a prosperous slaveholding family in South
Carolina
• The Second Great Awakening inspired them to become
Quakers and move to the North
• 1837, they embarked on lecture tours – women lecturing to
men, which was unheard of and scandalous
• This reaction propelled the question of women’s proper
sphere in society to the forefront of public debate

21. The Declaration of Rights and
Sentiments
• Catherine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucretia Mott,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Dorthea Dix
• Women attempted to enter the world antislavery
convention in London, 1840, and were turned away.
Decided that they must first elevate the status of women!
• 1848 convention in Seneca Falls, NY to discuss women’s
rights and issue the “Declaration of Sentiments and
Resolutions” borrowing heavily from the Declaration of
Independence and demand the right to vote
• Many of the women were Quakers
• The demands of women were usually secondary to
abolition